


Lack

by Galiko



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:09:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galiko/pseuds/Galiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We lived long together a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So that I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell." ~William Carlos Williams</p><p>Midorima Shintarou reaches for the unreachable, the untouchable, and the one thing that he isn't even sure that he really wants. It's his fault that he simply can't make contact, isn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lack

1.

There is a lot to hate about one Akashi Seijuurou. 

 

Midorima doesn’t think that he’s particularly wrong for disliking the other boy. It’s not his fault that they ended up in the same class and Akashi ends up getting perfect scores every single time. It’s not his fault that he can’t figure out the secret to those perfect scores, or that his are always just slightly _lacking._

 

Akashi Seijuurou is very good at making him feel like he lacks something, and that’s really not something he enjoys--especially when things are supposed to be fated, and apparently, he’s fated to be lacking in every single class that they share. 

 

2.

Frankly, Midorima would have never spoken to him if it were not for basketball.

 

Akashi is small. It’s not just a matter of width, but a matter of height, and Midorima has always been informed that his height is why he was chosen for this particular sport. It’s fate, he supposes, that it ended up this way. It’s not a fate that he likes, because according to everything sensible, Akashi shouldn’t be involved in this sport. He shouldn’t be someone that plays basketball, let alone someone that’s good at it.

 

Shockingly, Akashi is. Against all the odds, he is. Midorima doesn’t like it when things don’t make sense, and in the case of Akashi Seijuurou, it’s a rare thing that anything does. 

 

Midorima hates it more when he watches Akashi watch a game with seeming disinterest before butting in at the last second, finally putting forth effort into his role of point guard and sending a pass perfectly on its way. He hates the way that Akashi works. He hates the way that he thinks. He hates the way that he moves, and he hates the way that he rules the court without any effort.

 

When he misses one of Akashi’s passes later, though, he’s the one that feels as though he’s lacking, and apparently, that’s just a trend that’s going to be prevalent throughout their interactions. 

 

3.

Midorima discovers soon enough that Akashi is something of a space cadet.

 

It’s the first time that they talk, and it’s not exactly the most stellar of conversations. Akashi spends an inordinate amount of time with one Murasakibara Atsushi, and Midorima finds that annoying. He can’t stand the way that Akashi feeds him to make him shut up and cooperate, because really, _catering_ to that sort of behavior isn’t going to do anyone any favors.

 

“He’s getting crumbs everywhere on the court,” Midorima snaps, and Akashi just slowly blinks up at him, eyes half-lidded and cat-like and ah, his lashes are long. Not as long as his own of course, but--

 

“He seems happy about it,” Akashi says, calmly, unconcerned, and Midorima feels a lump forming in his throat for some odd, odd reason.

 

“Well, it’s still making a mess.”

 

Akashi pauses, open his mouth as if to say something, and then shrugs, turning away without another word. Murasakibara trails at his heels, and Midorima stands, flabbergasted, wondering how _he_ , Midorima Shintarou, was dismissed so openly and thoroughly. 

 

_What am I lacking now?_

 

4.

Holding Akashi’s attention seems to be impossible. Midorima wants to know why.

 

A shogi board can do it a dozen times more easily, and Midorima takes that as an insult. Certainly he’s more complicated than a shogi game. Certainly he’s more interesting.

 

It isn’t as if he _wants_ Akashi to pay that much attention to him, but the fact that he doesn’t is just...baffling.

 

He finds himself lingering in the door of the classroom one day, simply watching. Akashi is by himself, knee drawn to his chin propped upon it, and Midorima is there, sullen, angry, thinking about how Aomine had stolen the buzzer beater from the last practice game and ah, he hates that. 

 

He hates more, however, how Akashi doesn’t even seem to look at him until he actually speaks. He _hates_ being the first one to speak. 

 

“Akashi.”

 

There’s one single twitch of a perfect red eyebrow. “Midorima. Do you play?”

 

It’s how he becomes Akashi’s shogi partner, and considering that he loses every single time, he definitely lacks at least a dozen things.

 

5.

Playing shogi with Akashi is like peering into the other boy’s mind.

 

Midorima regrets it.

 

There’s a sharpness there that Midorima is certain that he should have seen already, either in the class room, on the court, _anywhere_. Instead, it’s only now when he washes Akashi sacrifice piece after piece of his own pieces on the board, backing himself into a corner that seems to have absolutely no hope of winning only to come out stronger, harder, to wipe his existence off of the map with moves that Midorima never could have imagined him formulating. 

 

It makes him nervous every single time that it happens, and he hates the way that just playing shogi with Akashi makes his stomach flip-flop repeatedly. 

 

“Why can’t you be more straight-forward?” Midorima asks one day, and Akashi merely looks at him, eyes half-lidded but sharp in their own way. They’re an odd shape, deep set and large for his face, and oddly, shockingly _pretty_. Midorima doesn’t like that label. It makes him anxious in another way, a way that makes his heart thud and that lump come back into his throat.

 

It makes him feel sick.

 

“If I win, why does it matter how it happens?” 

 

In theory, Midorima supposes that’s true enough, but it still doesn’t make him feel any less uneasy to play those games with Akashi. It doesn’t make him feel any less uneasy to receive his passes during matches, because he knows that Akashi is simply using him like one of those shogi pieces--a means to an end, a way to get what he wants, a way to profit even when he seems as though he’s the benevolent vice-captain that only wants success for the whole team. 

 

_Wrong._

 

What was he lacking before that he couldn’t see all of this? 

 

6.

Midorima is certain that he understands a great number of things now, but he doesn’t understand Akashi’s honest to god penchant for kindness with the oddest of subjects. 

 

Akashi should be cruel and merciless at all times, just like he is in his shogi games. He should have the sharpness of tongue that he has on the court with all people and all things. 

 

Instead, there’s a softness to the way that he speaks to Murasakibara, a gentleness in the way that he handles him, even when the hulking giant is ready to destroy them all with his bare fists. There’s a kindness to his touch whenever he’s handling animals, a fascination when there’s something warm and soft and cuddly placed into his grasp that he’s to care for.

 

Yet when he’s alone with Midorima, there’s nothing but a chill to be felt, and none of that kindness that Midorima other wise sees.

 

Midorima doesn’t understand it. He hates, truth be told, that he wants it so badly. He hates that Akashi turns him only the slightest of glances, and he hates that he simply can’t let it go.

 

Perhaps it’s a zodiac thing. It usually is. Perhaps that’s why they simply can’t connect, and why he simply can’t get what he wants. 

 

It can’t be a matter of lacking. It just has to be fate. 

 

7.

A bit of research yields that _sparks may fly_. 

 

Midorima wishes that would actually happen instead of the abject nothingness that he’s been exposed to for so long.

 

Nijimura is gone. Akashi seems somewhat distraught by that for all of an hour, and then he’s back to normal--or as normal as Akashi can ever seem. Midorima hates the way that he looks on the court, small and lithe but nothing but solid, streamlined muscles. There’s a sharpness to the way he moves, a precision to his posture and musculature. There’s none of the slouch of Murasakibara, the strangeness of Aomine, the energy of Kise.

 

It’s Akashi, perfect and poised, and always watching, like some strange carrion bird waiting to snatch up his dying prey. 

 

Midorima hates the times that he’s so caught up in their new captain’s movements that he almost misses passes and fumbles. Aomine laughs at him, and Akashi does nothing but stare at him, blinking slowly, irritation behind his lashes. 

 

Midorima hates himself then, because he knows very well how he’s lacking in Akashi Seijuurou’s eyes.

 

8.

“You _do_ look at me an awful lot, Midorima.”

 

Midorima hates the way that Akashi says his name. There’s a delicacy of it on his tongue, a precision to the syllables as if he’s sounding out every single stroke of the kanji rather than the actual pronunciation of the kana. 

 

He hates it, because it makes his stomach do that strange, rolling _thump_ within him. He hates it, because it makes his mouth dry. 

 

“I do not.” Midorima shoves up his glasses then, looking pointedly out the window, not at the shogi board in front of them, not at Akashi, who remains as impassive as always. “I never look at you, except when we’re playing a match.”

 

“I’m not sure why you feel the need to lie about it, but whatever.”

 

Akashi has nice hands. Long-fingered, small, surprising for a basketball player, but then again, everything about his physique is surprising about being a basketball player. Shogi suits him far better, as does horseback riding. Even still, Akashi not only perseveres, but excels. 

 

Midorima is actually certain that Akashi plays basketball because it’s the only thing to challenge him to date. Even though Akashi is lacking in height, he still manages to succeed.

 

If Akashi can overcome, why can’t he?

 

9.

Midorima looks at Akashi a lot. Akashi knows. Akashi is always right.

 

He looks at the way that he moves, the way he almost occasionally smiles, the way that he touches things and people and animals. He looks at the way Akashi disinterestedly stares down into his textbooks. He looks at the way he studies playbooks on the court intensely, the way that he passes even when the ball isn’t coming anywhere close to him.

 

He looks at Akashi’s back in the locker rooms--pale, slim, but packed solidly with muscles. He thinks a lot about how it would feel to actually put his hands on that, to pick him up and feel the denseness of that muscle, the weight of Akashi in his hands that he’s _sure_ is so much more than the other boy’s lean form belies. 

 

When Akashi turns around and grabs him by the tie, yanks him down, and kisses him hard one day, Midorima thinks he might get his wish.

 

Instead, though, Akashi pulls away before he can flail any more than he already is. He pulls away before Midorima can even think it all through, and he licks his lips, looking contemplatively up at the ceiling--not at Midorima, not even through him. “Less than I would have expected,” he murmurs, and drifts away as if the whole thing had never happened.

 

Less of _what?_ What is he lacking _now?_

 

It haunts him even when he has a hand on his cock that evening, his face buried into a pillow and the precise number of strokes that it normally takes to make himself get off long gone because his mind is so very, very unsteady.

 

The next day, Akashi still says nothing of it, and they walk home together. The gates to Akashi’s family home are as high as ever, and it’s strange that he feels far more connected to Akashi once they’ve closed behind him than when Akashi is standing right next to him. 

 

10. 

Midorima though that he’d known terror when Akashi kissed him. He was wrong.

 

He knows terror now, though, when he watches the match between Akashi and Murasakibara. He knows terror when Akashi is about to lose, when something in him snaps, and when Murasakibara loses interest quickly and deliberately, fleeing the scene in a way that Midorima has never seen before.

 

He knows terror all the more when there’s that gold glint to Akashi’s left eye that just doesn’t go away.

 

There’s something wrong there. There’s something unnatural. It shows in the way Akashi plays shogi, first and foremost. There’s a sharpness and precision there still, but this kind is less about sacrifice, all about conquest. He doesn’t let himself get backed into corners--he shoves himself out onto the board, aggressive and open, claiming all and allowing no room for error. 

 

“I am absolute,” Akashi tells him, the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his lips. “This is only natural.” 

 

The heat that used to _try_ and race through his blood around Akashi vanishes. Fear is something cold and loathsome, and Midorima likes no part of it. 

 

There’s something lacking in Akashi now, and that terrifies him.

 

11. 

The thing that’s lacking is self-preservation. 

 

The only thing that holds Akashi back on the court is boredom. If there isn’t any fight that’s going to happen, Akashi simply isn’t there. His head is in the clouds, his mind focused in whatever little room that Akashi holds himself up within, and everyone else is expected to perform the roles that he otherwise would. 

 

There aren’t any snack crumbs on the court anymore. The shogi games are less frequent, and Midorima thinks that’s for the best, anyway. He wants no part in them, not when Akashi ends them quickly and decisively, not with the lingering moves that would take hours and irritate Midorima to no end.

 

He misses them. He hates that he misses them. 

 

“You won’t look at me now, Shintarou.”

 

Midorima has never hated the utterance of his given name more. It makes his mouth go dry. It makes him feel as though he’s standing on wobbly fawn-legs. “Should I look at you?” he mutters, shoving up his glasses. “I thought you hated it when I stared.”

 

Akashi merely hums underneath his breath. “The weaker ones always do avert their gazes.” 

 

They both lack something now.

 

12.

It’s honestly a relief when they graduate.

 

It’s honestly a relief when the team breaks up, when it falls apart at the very end, when everything is a mess and Midorima doesn’t have to be coherent because no one else is. He doesn’t have to make attempts to fix anything, because there’s nothing to fix anymore, even though he likes it when things are all in order, all in one piece. 

 

It doesn’t have to be anymore.

 

Akashi has been broken for some time. Perhaps that’s why he hates this all so much. Akashi was never whole, but he was always still...functional (lovely, really, like a piece of kintsugi, like something he wanted to handle and touch and enjoy). 

 

“I’ll be at Rakuzan.”

 

“Shuutoku.” 

 

Akashi nods, as if that’s all according to his plan all over again. “That suits you.” 

 

_Does it?_

 

Midorima isn’t sure. At least Shuutoku doesn’t seem to lack anything.

 

13.

It must be all according to Akashi’s plan, because they lose. 

 

Midorima has never doubted more that he lacks, but Akashi does more than he. He can tell from that tired smile delivered to him from across the court. 

 

Shamefully, pathetically, there’s nothing he can do. He’s already done everything, and fate simply can’t do the rest here. 

 


End file.
